Goodreads

[janedavitt]

Wow. I just lost 11 ratings and 10 reviews on my books in the last hour. I can only assume that's because the people who left them have deleted their GR accounts or been banned.

GR have apologized for deleting people's shelves without warning them first but I guess it's too little too late; they're in a major PR meltdown here. I can't say I liked it when someone reviewed one of my books and labelled the shelf they put it on as 'gun to my head would not reread' but you know, their shelf, their opinion. By cracking down on shelves like that, GR have targeted a tiny percent of their users and in the process alienated a huge percent. Not good.

And their patronizing little notes to authors that pop up on good and bad reviews make my teeth grind.

Comments

[iadorespike]

I don't have an account there, but I do go and look around occasionally. I think it's really a shame (shenanigans!) from what you're saying, and it's really a bummer that it's affecting the author's reviews and ratings. :(

[janedavitt]

Like LJ, they've not helped by keeping it very much under the radar and not announcing it site-wide. In some ways, it's improved my ratings as a few of the negative ones have gone, but hand on heart, I'd rather the books had a full range of reviews not just nice ones.

[princessofgeeks]

What is going on here?

[janedavitt]

Been happening for the last week or more:

http://dearauthor.com/news/monday-news-shey-stahl-plagiarism-scandal-goodreads-deletes-reviews-without-notice-amazon-shares-at-an-all-time-high-cosplay-copyright-and-paid-for-reviews/

and here

http://gigaom.com/2013/09/24/as-goodreads-grows-up-it-cant-please-everyone-should-it-try/

[princessofgeeks]

wow. thanks for the links.

[janedavitt]

When Amazon bought them out a few months back, it was the beginning of the end of free expression, i think :-(

[princessofgeeks]

yeah, that did not bode well.

[copracat]

It's appalling that a (very rubbish) effort to manage user to user abuse has turned into authors vs readers. Goodreads could have handled that a whole lot better, though I imagine the behaviour of the 'stop Goodreads bullies' idiots just fanned embers to conflagration.

Sorry you lost reviews. I didn't think of that when I deleted my GR back when Amazon bought them. I've moved to both Library Thing (which won't import about a third of the books I've listed so it's manual or nothing there) and BookLikes (which is a bit too tumblr, but there you go). I imagine that your reviewers will also be moving to other sites so you may be able to find them and link? Not so useful to have them split up, of course. :(

[janedavitt]

It has been managed in ways that remind me of LJ-levels of cluelessness. I'm not bothered too much about the reviews I can't see anymore but as a reader and an author I wish they hadn't been so draconian.